Save the Whales with Enkosini and the O.R.C.A. Whale and Dolphin Marine Conservation Project

A Line of Orcas

Image source: Marinebio.org

Zoologists call whales and dolphins “charismatic megafauna” and it’s easy to see why. People are fascinated with sea mammals. For thousands of years, they have been the subject of religious myth, worship, and reverence. Their size is certainly part of the fascination. The blue whale is the largest animal on planet Earth. But they are also renowned for an intelligence that is rather unique in the animal kingdom. Whales, dolphins, and elephants are the only non-primate creatures that have this human-like wisdom. They have culture and tradition. They have complex social lives. And yet, for centuries humans have been killing these magnificent creatures. We have used their blubber for candles and their baleen for corsets. We have eaten their meat and gotten rich off of their destruction. Today, we are finally beginning to recognize the importance of these incredible creatures. As our oceans warm up and acidify, poachers still roam the waters, and policy ties the hands of conservationists, people are rallying around a single cause: saving the whales.

The Ripple Effect: An African Adventure with Anna Strahs Watts, Part Two

Anna Strahs Watts Outside the Cross-Cultural Solutions Office

Image source: Anna Strahs Watts

Welcome to part two of our Ripple Effect interview with Anna Strahs Watts, blogger, gluten free baker and avid traveler. To learn more about Anna and her amazing adventures, visit her blog A Girl and Her Backpack, where she chronicles her experiences overseas and how they have changed her perspective on the world in which we live.

Volunteer with Elephants at Thailand’s Elephant Nature Park

Resident Elephant at Elephant Nature Park

Image source: Phototracs.com

Elephants are some of the world’s most majestic creatures. They’re the largest living land animals on Earth. Known for their memory and intelligence, Elephants are a symbol of wisdom in Asian cultures. When I was a girl living in Kenya, I spent long days by the game preserve’s salt lick, watching the elephants interacting with each other and caring for their young. Once, three hyenas tried to attack one of the babies and the adults surrounded her in a giant circle, trumpeting their furious sounds and rearing up, thrashing their massive tusks in the air. The hyenas skulked back into the underbrush. The baby was safe. Elephants migrate over huge distances, through deserts, to find watering holes. The matriarchs teach the younger females how to find the water, where to find food, how far to march… elephants are some of the only animals besides humans that have culture. They have history. They have communities. They have no natural predators and yet, elephants all over the world are facing possible extinction.

Jenkins/Penn Haitian Relief Organization (J/P HRO)

Sean Penn Haiti Volunteer

Image source: Indiewire.com

When a 7.0 earthquake struck Haiti in early 2010, it seemed like the entire world turned its eyes to the poverty-stricken Caribbean nation – and Sean Penn was no exception. In the wake of the disaster, which virtually leveled the tiny country, Penn and fellow philanthropist Diana Jenkins sprung into action and formed the Jenkins/Penn Haitian Relief Organization (J/P HRO).

Unlike some other celebrity-based charity organizations, the J/P HRO and its namesakes were not only at ground zero immediately following the disaster but, nearly three years later, are still actively involved. Sean Penn’s volunteerism through the J/P HRO is, in fact, so lauded that he was recently named ambassador at large for Haiti.